MacRumors

Apple will be launching the newest activity challenge for Apple Watch wearers next week, with a focus on Heart Month. To complete the challenge, you'll need to close your Apple Watch's exercise ring for seven days in a row during one specific week: from February 8 to February 14, which fits with the heart theme and ends on Valentine's Day.

Apple hasn't detailed the rewards yet, but they're likely to be the same as previous activity challenges: a colorful badge in the "Achievements" tab of the Activity app, and a matching sticker within Messages to send to friends and family. Apple Watch owners should start noticing the Heart Month challenge within their Activity app on Tuesday, February 6, two days ahead of when it begins.

The February challenge is coming on the heels of this year's "Ring in the New Year" challenge, which tasked users with closing all three Activity rings for seven days in a row in January.

(Thanks, Clement!)

YouTube this morning teased that its YouTube TV Apple TV app was "coming very soon," and "coming very soon" apparently meant this afternoon.

The YouTube TV app is now available for download from the App Store on the Apple TV, where it is featured prominently in a banner.

YouTube TV's new Apple TV app comes just in time for Super Bowl LII, which is set to take place on Sunday, February 4. YouTube also recently expanded to Roku devices, presumably with the aim of luring new subscribers who want to watch the Super Bowl.

The YouTube TV service, which is priced at $35 per month, offers subscribers access to television shows on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, the CW, Disney, ESPN, FX, USA, and dozens more.

YouTube TV boasts more than 40 channels, including live sports and news. It also offers unlimited DVR storage space and allows subscribers to access their shows from anywhere in the United States, plus it includes content from the $9.99 per month YouTube Red service.

Introduced back in April, YouTube TV is a live streaming service designed to compete with offerings like Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Now, and Playstation Vue, all of which are available via apps on fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models.

Apple Pay is set to expand to a Brazil later this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed in today's first quarter earnings call. While Apple didn't provide an exact date for the launch of Apple Pay in Brazil, Cook did say it would come soon.

We began hearing rumors of an Apple Pay expansion to Brazil two years ago, but in December of last year, iPhone users in Brazil were able to see terms of service information when attempting to add a Visa Platinum Personnalité card from Itaú Unibanco, suggesting an imminent launch.

It is not yet clear which banks will support Apple Pay when the feature launches, as there is not yet an Apple Pay website for the feature in the country. More details are likely to be available soon.

Since its 2014 launch, Apple has expanded Apple Pay to more than a dozen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and United Arab Emirates.

Apple Pay works on all iPhones with Touch ID or Face ID, including iPhone 6, 6s, 6, 7, 8, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, 7 Plus, 8 Plus, SE, and X. It is also available on all Apple Watch models and can be used to make purchases in apps and on the web on Macs and iPads.

During today's earnings call, Apple also shared some details on Apple Pay, which saw its best ever quarter in Q1 2018.

Apple Pay grew 50 percent year-over-year, and it is now accepted at more than half of all retail locations in the United States, and at 2/3rds of the country's top retailers. Global Apple Pay purchase volume was also up.

Update: Apple has launched an Apple Pay webpage on its Brazilian site.

Apple's services category continues to grow rapidly, and in the first fiscal quarter of 2018, Apple services, which includes iTunes, the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple Pay, and AppleCare, saw revenue of $8.5 billion, up 18 percent year over year.

The App Store saw its best holiday season ever, and Q1 2018 marked the best quarter ever for not only the App Store, but also Apple Music, iCloud, and Apple Pay. Apple Music, iCloud, and Apple Pay all saw significant growth in active users.

Paid subscriptions passed 240 million by the end of the December quarter, which Apple says is an increase of $30 million in the last 90 days alone, the largest quarterly growth ever.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says Apple is well on its way to reaching its goal to double its services revenue by 2020.

Apple today announced that its active installed base of devices has reached 1.3 billion, a milestone the company hit in January. That includes iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch models in use around the world.

The number was shared by Apple CEO Tim Cook in a press release announcing the company's record earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2018. Cook says that Apple has seen the number of active devices grow 30 percent over the course of the last two years. Apple hit its 1 billion active device milestone back in January of 2016.

"We've also achieved a significant milestone with our active installed base of devices reaching 1.3 billion in January. That's an increase of 30 percent in just two years, which is a testament to the popularity of our products and the loyalty and satisfaction of our customers."

Apple this afternoon said it sold 77.3 million iPhones, 13.2 million iPads, and 5.1 million Macs during the first quarter of 2018.

One of the surprises of this year's Consumer Electronics Show was a smart toothbrush from Colgate, which, as it turns out, was designed to be an Apple Store exclusive.

The new $100 Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush is both Colgate's first smart iPhone-connected brush and the first personal hygiene product you can get right from an Apple Store.

Toothbrushes that connect to your iPhone have become a thing over the course of the last couple of years, and you can now get smart brushes from most of the major brands, including Philips and Oral-B. I'm no stranger to smart toothbrushes -- I've previously reviewed the Oral-B SmartSeries, the Sonicare FlexCare Platinum Connected, and the Sonicare DiamondClean Smart, and for the last couple of weeks, I've been testing the Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush.

Colgate's Smart Toothbrush is the simplest smart toothbrush that I've tested so far, but as you'll see in my review below, there are some shortcomings to be aware of if you're considering this brush.

Design and Features

Colgate partnered with Kolibree for the Smart Electronic Toothbrush, and the brush itself appears to be a Kolibree design because it's almost identical to the $129 Kolibree Ara. This Kolibree mirror is the first higher-end toothbrush that Colgate's come out with, so it's different from all other Colgate brushes on the market, which are typically not priced over $10.

Design wise, the brush is made from a lightweight white plastic material, and it consists of two pieces: a removable and replaceable brush head and the vibrating base that the brush head fits on. The brush head pops onto the base of the toothbrush and then twists to lock in place.

There's single button on the base of the Colgate Smart that turns it on or turns it off, and that's the extent of the functionality, too. It's on or it's off. There are no modes or sensitivity levels to switch between, so you can't alter brushing length (it goes for two minutes), brushing intensity, or any other parameter.

➜ Click here to read more...

Instagram today announced the launch of a new "Type" mode in stories, a feature that the company was previously testing with a small number of users.

Type mode is designed to allow Instagram users to share text-only posts in Instagram Stories, and the feature is similar in design to the Facebook option that lets you accentuate text-only posts with large fonts and colorful backgrounds.

According to Instagram, Type uses creative text styles and backgrounds to allow users to turn their "most random thoughts into something colorful and expressive."

Tap "Type" and write whatever comes to mind -- your favorite lyrics, a silly thought or a random idea -- and play with different styles to change the look and feel. Then, you can pick different background colors, highlight words and phrases or add a background photo.

The new styles introduced with the Type feature can also be used when adding text to any photo or video, and as with all Stories posts, content will disappear after 24 hours.

Type content is part of Instagram version 30 for iOS, which can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

YouTube TV is YouTube's bundled streaming television service, available for customers on the web, iOS, Android, Xbox One, Android TV, and other platforms. An app for Apple TV was initially planned for late 2017, but was delayed to Q1 2018, and now a YouTube representative speaking to CNET has teased the Apple TV app's imminent launch by stating it will be "coming very soon."

Apart from Apple TV, today YouTube TV has expanded to Roku devices in time for Super Bowl LII. Taking into account the YouTube representative's comments, it appears that the company is working to launch the Apple TV app in time for some of the big live TV events this winter. So if it doesn't launch for Super Bowl LII this Sunday, February 4, there's still time for a debut during the Winter Olympic games (February 9-25) and ahead of the 90th Academy Awards (March 4).

Like other versions of the app, YouTube TV on Apple TV will offer subscribers of the $35/month service the ability to stream cable television shows on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CW, Disney, ESPN, FX, USA, and dozens of other major channels. YouTube TV is a competitor to similar services like Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Now, and Playstation Vue, all of which can be viewed on the fourth and fifth generation Apple TV models. In addition to streaming live TV, YouTube TV includes content from the $9.99/month YouTube Red service.

The company previously detailed the Apple TV app last October, showing that the app will have Home, Live, and Library tabs for viewing content similar to other iterations of YouTube TV. There will also be a dark background on Apple TV, a live grid-based guide to check out what's currently on TV, and a feature that keeps video running in the background while you navigate the app.

eBay this week announced major changes coming for both buyers and sellers on its online marketplace, with a plan to phase out its 15-year-long partnership with PayPal and eventually integrate Amsterdam-based payments company Adyen as its "primary partner for payments processing globally" (via Recode). This will eventually affect all eBay customers on every version of the site, including desktop and its iOS and Android apps.

The process will happen over a long period of time, beginning with payments intermediation on its marketplace -- essentially helping sellers and buyers transition to Adyen -- in the second half of 2018. This will be a "small scale" initial expansion, and grow further throughout 2019. eBay currently has an operating agreement to keep PayPal as its primary payments processor through mid-2020, so the plan is to have "transitioned a majority" of its marketplace customers to Adyen by 2021.

After that time, PayPal will be relegated to a secondary checkout option for customers until July 2023. Following that transition it's unclear whether eBay and PayPal's partnership will end completely, or if the payments company will simply continue as a secondary option in checkout.

For Adyen, eBay noted that there will be "additional payments-related data" required to transition to the new platform, with these steps "required" to continue selling on eBay. Still, the company ensured that most of the ways that buyers and sellers pay for and receive money on the site will "be very similar" to how it worked with PayPal.

The way that sellers engage with eBay in an intermediated landscape will, for the most part, be very similar as they do today. For example, sellers will not need to change their accounts with eBay. Sellers will continue to log into eBay and manage their listings as they do today. As eBay begins to intermediate payments, sellers can expect to see new, streamlined dashboards and reports inclusive of payments – all within eBay.

eBay said customers will benefit from this shift in multiple ways, including lower costs of payments processing for sellers, as well as a simplified pricing structure and "more predictable access" to funds. Buyers will have more payment options, which eBay hopes will increase checkouts on the site. Additionally, because Adyen focuses solely on providing back-end payments services and will not link out to a secondary website, eBay said it will now "manage the entire checkout experience" so the payment process can be more streamlined.

PayPal became eBay's main payments provider in 2003, following eBay's acquisition of PayPal a year prior at $1.5 billion. In 2015, the companies split to become separate public companies, but agreed upon a deal that keeps PayPal as its primary payments provider for five years, through 2020. For PayPal, the company has been expanding its own reach in online payments over the past year, allowing friends to pay one another in Facebook Messenger and introducing Venmo as an online payment option at more than two million retailer websites last October.

Ahead of the launch of Apple Pay Cash -- which works like Venmo in letting users pay one another through an app -- PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said he didn't think Apple's peer-to-peer payments platform would hurt Venmo because of Venmo's availability across ecosystems. "We’re technology agnostic," Shulman said at the time, emphasizing that this provides the PayPal-owned company a "powerful advantage" over rival P2P platforms.